


Alien Patrol

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Doom Patrol AU, Happy Ending, Immortality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25983265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Alex Manes has long thought himself a monster before an alien entity irradiated his ship and stole his life away from him and made him a mummy of a man. Over sixty years later, he's begun to have dreams that are so real and each time, they bring him back to his lost love, Michael Guerin, forcing Alex to reconcile the fact that loving someone doesn't make you wrong.Only, it turns out, Michael might not be as lost as he'd once thought and Alex might just have a second chance.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 18
Kudos: 62





	Alien Patrol

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fusion with Doom Patrol and while I don't follow the events exactly, I stick pretty close to the Larry Trainor = Alex Manes plot in ways, so be warned in case you are leery of spoilers!

The 6:12 to Tulsa rattles along, carrying cargo and goods, while the sunset illuminates each passing car. Hank Williams plays on the radio. The blue Chevy truck is sitting a little low on one side, because Michael forgot to put air in the front tire. 

These details are etched in his memory forever.

And that’s the bitch of it. 

His _memory_ , because none of this is real.

Alex has opened his eyes to find himself laid atop Michael Guerin, kissing him in a way he hasn’t in over fifty years. He scrambles back in the back of the Chevy pick-up, gaping at Michael. His Michael. His curls, the look in his eyes, and the desperation. It’s almost as if Michael’s the one who hasn’t seen him in so long.

“What is this?” he demands skywards, searching for the spirit. “You ran out of ways to torture me, so now you’re coming up with this?”

“Alex,” Michael pleads, reaching for his hand. “Can’t you be here with me?”

Drawn back to Earth, Alex stares at him in disbelief. It’s been so long, even though he dreams of Michael constantly, but not like this. Usually, the dreams are torture of their own, but this has a feeling of reality to it that the dreams never do. Michael has never pleaded with him like this before. This is a fantasy, because he left all of this behind the day he flew into the stars and a cosmic being irradiated him beyond recognition, making him the monster he’d always felt he was. 

Alex stares down at their joined hands. 

_Hands_.

Fingers, hands, and flesh. 

Alex reaches up to touch his face, his hair, and lets out a sob when he realizes that he hasn’t been irradiated and that he’s some echo of himself in here. Why does that feel even more like torture?

“Why can’t I be here?” Alex demands. “Because it’s wrong.”

Everything is right, but it’s wrong.

“It’s not the 60’s anymore,” he says, staring at the sky. “This is cruel, even for you,” he accuses, his words brittle and broken. “I don’t want to live in the hollow memory of the man I loved.” He turns, staring at Michael, and knows that he hasn’t said it right. “The man I love,” he corrects himself, watching as Michael’s eyes widen with shock, like it’s the first time he’s ever heard those words.

Well. 

Alex supposes it is, even if that’s not Michael.

“Why can’t we just be here?” Michael asks him. “Why does it have to be perfect, Alex? Why can’t we just sit here and watch the sunset and kiss, again, please?” 

It won’t be real. Alex knows it won’t be real. Michael is still a faint memory of the past that he’s never going to get back. He’ll wake up and have to deal with whatever _insanity_ the Chief has for them. Isobel will try and pull him out of his shell, Rosa will swoop in with one of her personalities, and he’ll cope with Kyle’s anger. 

With all that in mind, Alex makes a decision.

Hollow or not, he’d much rather be here. 

Alex crawls back towards Michael in the truck, cupping his face with both hands as he leans in to kiss him, pressing their foreheads together. “You can’t see the sunset,” he says, because Michael is staring at him and not the beautiful watercolor-like scene on the horizon.

“I’d rather be looking at you,” Michael vows. “Did you mean it? When you said you love me, did you?”

Alex opens his mouth to promise, starts with, “Of c…”

Then, gasps awake, the spirit slamming back into his body. He’s back at the Chief’s house, the bandages she’d given him sitting on the bed beside him. 

“No!” Alex shouts. “No, not yet, why would you bring me back and then take me away?” 

There’s a thumping sound downstairs followed by Isobel screaming. The spirit inside him glows blue to the touch and Alex sags back, staring at the bed and the bandages, knowing that with something dangerous afoot, there’s no way he’s going to be allowed to sink back into his dream and visit Michael Guerin once more.

“Back to being a hero, huh?” is Alex’s exhausted reply to what he already knows the spirit wants of him.

He picks up the bandages and starts to prepare himself. 

Another day, another threat, and another struggle when all Alex wants is to sink back into the dreams now that he and the spirit inside him have reached a truce, and the nightmares have faded into something so much better.

* * *

It’s another few days before Alex gets another chance to see Michael.

The spirit leaves him, and when he does, Alex travels back in time.

Alex gasps as he comes to in a motel, milkshakes and fries on the table in front of him. Michael’s dipping a fry in the chocolate shake, ice cream on his lip in a way that Alex knows is on purpose. It’s there so Alex will kiss it off. 

He presses his palm to his chest, rubbing it slowly.

“I guess we’ve moved on from makeouts in the truck,” he says, trying to place where he is. He doesn’t recognize the motel. Should he? Is this somewhere that he and Michael have been before?

No. 

He remembers every stolen moment with Michael. He’d remember this, especially this. This is somewhere that they wouldn’t have to hide from the other flight crew. If they had this, all those decades ago, it would be a memory that Alex cherished and held onto. This is another fanciful walk into imagination.

One more thing that never happened, because Alex couldn’t be who he is. 

“I gotta say, this is the best milkshake I’ve ever had in my life,” Michael insists. 

Alex sinks down into the chair beside him, reaching across the table to wipe away the droplet of ice cream from Michael’s lips, still in awe that he’s sitting here. He doesn’t remember any of this, but he’s dreamed about the idea of uninterrupted time with Michael. 

“Where are we?” Alex asks with heavy uncertainty, his eyes on the door like he’s still trying to decide if he wants to run. Michael’s here, though, so even though he doesn’t recognize the location, it would take a hell of a lot to get him to bolt. 

“I think it’s the roadside motel, along the interstate,” Michael admits, almost like he doesn’t know. “You have no idea how many times I fantasized about you and I getting a room here,” he goes on, leaning forward to get into Alex’s space to share his secrets. It’s like something in him breaks as soon as he meets Alex’s eyes, like he’s been desperate to see him again instead of the other way around. “Alex,” he breathes out. “Alex, what happened?”

What happened to Captain Alex Manes?

“You know what happened, there was a crash,” Alex says bitterly. “I was hurt.”

“You told me to go, you made me leave,” Michael snaps back, and he sounds every bit as hurt. “I had to respect your wishes. If I’d stayed, you would’ve never forgiven me, but I…” he trails off, almost like the hurt in his voice has caught up to him and he realizes what he’s saying. Michael stays quiet, reaching across the motel room table for his hands.

Alex doesn’t know what he’s supposed to expect of his memory, or whatever fantastical bullshit the spirit is making him live, but the feeling of Michael’s hands in his is the realest thing he’s ever felt in his life.

The calluses are there, just like Alex remembers. He’s warm, overly so, which reminds Alex of all those nights curled together stargazing in the back of Michael’s truck. When Michael drags his thumb down Alex’s lifeline, it’s a familiar tenderness that steals his breath away.

“I don’t want to waste this time arguing,” Michael says. “I just wanted to know where you are.”

“Why?” Alex exhales. “So you can come get me?”

The joke falls flat, with Michael staring at him earnestly. 

“It’s too late,” Alex says, heart aching because he knows the truth. Alex is only alive because of the spirit inside of him. There’s no way that Michael is anything but an old man now. Michael is nothing more than a memory now.

“No,” Michael protests. “No, Alex, it’s not, please…”

He’s the very best of his memories, but he’s still nothing more than a thought. 

“Yes it is,” Alex shuts him down, and stares at his chest, pressing a hand firmly to it. “I’m done with this. Let me out of here.”

Nothing happens, and he’s left with Michael staring at him with that wounded look in his eyes.

“Let me out! Let me go! I don’t want to be here any…”

He’s thrown from the motel room in the blink of an eye, collapsing back onto the Chief’s hand-quilted bedspread. Breathing out raggedly, he hits his head a few more times against the pillow, wanting to _scream_ that the last thing he’d seen from Michael had been that hurt look in his eye, like Alex had been the one to do this to him and not the spirit inside. 

He can only hope he’ll get one more chance, even though Alex is beginning to wonder if he really deserves it. Letting his head fall back against the pillow, Alex stares up at the ceiling of his lead-surrounded room, then to the irradiated husks of limbs he has, and he thinks that even if it weren’t too late and Michael weren’t an old man, there’s absolutely no way that he’d want Alex.

Not like this. 

He turns over and curls up on himself. 

“Not again tonight,” Alex begs the spirit, his voice rough with grief. “Please.”

As always, there’s no audible answer, but when Alex presses his fingertips to his chest, the blue spark tells him that the spirit is answering him. It’s a shame Alex doesn’t know if he’s earned a permanent release or just a temporary reprieve from the constant torture.

* * *

One more departure of the spirit, one more jaunt back in time for Alex, only this time he _really_ doesn’t know where he is.

He looks around him at an unfamiliar bar, then sights Michael sitting at the end of it joking around with a few other men. “Alex!” Michael says with delight, eyes lighting up as he coaxes him over. “Alex, these are some of my friends,” he says. “We work together. They helped me work on an engineering project that’s out of this world.”

Alex forces a smile, feeling uncomfortable with so many people around. “You’ve already moved on from my ship?”

Michael gapes at him, confused. “Of course I did. Alex…”

“Can we go somewhere private and talk?” Alex cuts him off. 

Michael doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on, which makes two of them. Alex grabs Michael by the arm, giving him a forceful tug, even though there’s no need. Michael goes with him with barely any fight. Once they’re in a booth at the back of the bar, Alex feels like he needs to talk or he’s going to lose his mind. 

“Why am I here?”

“I kind of hoped because you wanted to be,” Michael replies, voice low. 

“I’ve never been to that motel with you, I don’t recognize this place. Michael, I don’t know what’s going on. I want to see you, of course I want to see you, I _love_ you, but your friends and this bar, this is all a fantasy that I don’t remember having.” He glances around, seeing men begin to pair off as the jukebox begins to play a softer, slower tune. “This isn’t what I want. “

“Are you serious?” Michael scoffs. “Look, if this is how you’re gonna be, then I want to talk to the thing inside you.”

“How do you even know about that?” Alex shouts. 

“I know much more than you ever gave me credit for, because you never let me in! Fuck, Alex, I am _trying_ to help you, but you’re making it impossible!” Michael snaps at him.

“How? By torturing me with what never was?” Alex spits back at him. “I love you, Michael,” are impassioned words he’s been wanting to say for decades, but it feels hollow here to shout them in a dream-world. “You’re my soulmate, but I can’t keep doing this dance with you in my head where nothing is real.”

“I can’t believe I came to Roswell and spent all these years working on something and you won’t even give me a chance to explain,” Michael scoffs, shaking his head. 

Alex stares at him in disbelief. “Wait. What?”

Where the hell did Roswell come from? Alex opens his mouth to demand answers, but before he can, the entire bar blinks away. He’s left alone in a fantasy, and it feels almost like it’s the opposite of waking up from a dream. It’s almost like someone else did the waking up and left Alex all alone. 

He presses a hand to his chest, taking one last look at his reflection in the dull mirror behind the bar. “You got a lot to answer for, buddy,” he tells the thing inside of him, and waits to be woken up. 

When he’s pulled back to the land of the living, something is unsettling Alex and he can’t shake it off. Why would Alex be thinking about Roswell? In his career, he’d never spent time on that base, so why would a version of Michael in his head suddenly be talking about it. 

Also, _working on something_? 

There are a lot of mysteries he can’t solve and the thing is, he can’t explain them. His return to consciousness also has one other mystifying addition, which is that there’s a phone book open on the dresser and when Alex wanders over to where the lucky strip of fabric that Michael had once given him lies on top of the dresser, released from the drawer where Alex has been keeping it locked away, as a cherished heirloom.

On the mirror in front of him, post-it notes spell out a single word:

 _Go_. 

There’s no mistaking what the spirit wants. Not now.

* * *

It takes Alex another two days to do what he’s been putting off for decades. 

“Rosa, I need you to help me find someone,” he says, handing her a slip of paper. For once, he’s grateful that the sunglasses and bandages keep her from seeing the expression on his face, because he’s not sure he could bear looking so vulnerable in front of her. 

Rosa takes the paper, glancing at him for a long, long moment. Then, she finally seems to agree without actually saying as much. “Michael Guerin, huh? Old friend?”

“Something like that,” he agrees.

She takes the paper without asking for a favor in return, which means Alex is being even more of a pathetic sad-sack, but he’s not going to fight it. He doesn’t see her for a few days. According to Kyle, there was some trouble in Rosa’s Underground (whatever that means), but all seems to return to normal by the weekend. 

Better than normal, because Rosa seems to be in a damn good mood. 

“Here,” Rosa says, slipping him a new scrap of paper over pancakes. “I found your guy.”

She did, too.

“Thanks, Rosa, this is…”

“And now, let’s go see him!”

“Flit, no! No!” Alex tries his best to protest, but it’s no use. She reaches over and clamps a hand down on Alex’s arm, transporting them from the breakfast table to sunny, hot New Mexico. When they arrive, Alex glares at Rosa, but seeing as he’s wearing his bandages and the sunglasses, the effect definitely isn’t coming across.

“Good luck with your boyfriend,” Rosa says, and in a flash, she’s Flit again, jumping back to the safe enclosure of the Chief’s mansion. 

“Fuck you too, Rosa,” Alex mutters, hating that he’s not ready for this, but also that he’s pretty sure he’s never going to _be_ ready for this. Maybe that’s why he’s so mad. He knows that what she’d done had been necessary, or he’d have stayed hidden under Mimi’s roof forever. 

Michael’s house in Roswell is a single-story bungalow. 

Alex presses his palm over his chest, trying to get in contact with the spirit inside of him. “Is this where you’re trying to get me?” he asks the thing inside of him. “Is that what this is about? You’re torturing me with these images of my past, there has to be a reason why. Is this why? You want me to be here to see Michael as an old man?” 

The spirit inside him hums, but gives no actual answer. 

Of course not. 

He’s on his own for this one. 

Alex knocks on the door, the bandages wrapped around his fingers muffling the sound. 

“Hang on!” the voice from his past and his nightmares and his dreams calls out from within. “Hold your horses, I’m coming!”

Alex is busy wondering what Michael is going to look like as an old man when the front door is pulled open and Alex is confronted with his first look at Michael Guerin in over fifty years. The slip of paper he’s holding in his hands falls, loosened by the shock of his fingers going numb and allowing it to flutter away.

Michael hasn’t changed.

He’s every bit as young as he looked all those years ago.

“No,” he says, hand on his chest. “This is cruel, even for you.”

“Alex!”

“Wake me up! I don’t want to be in a dream with him like this!” he shouts, searching for some escape. “Wake me…” He stops in his tracks when he sees the faint blue glow of the spirit inside of him. He’s hit with another burst of shock when Michael reaches out for him. 

“Come inside, Alex. I’ll explain there.” 

Michael’s touch is warm and solid. He’s real. Alex doesn’t understand how this can be possible, but his feet are moving on autopilot inside the house, desperate to understand what’s going on. He’s been living longer because of what happened to him on the Mercury mission, but he’d paid a godawful price for it. 

Did Michael make a deal with a devil? 

“I didn’t know where you were. You told me to go. I lost you, and no matter how much searching I did, I couldn’t find you. It was like you’d been _erased_.” Michael’s rambling, but he closes the door behind Alex and gets him inside what looks like a perfectly normal little house. “You vanished off the face of the Earth, almost like you just stopped living.”

In a way, he had vanished, because he’d done it to himself. 

“I don’t understand how you can be alive,” Alex says the words cautiously, looking for the trap.

“Come here,” Michael insists, gesturing for him to follow. 

Alex does, flexing his fingers against the protective bandages Chief had given to him when he’d first joined her and the other misfits. Michael is walking through the house like he’s still the same twenty-seven year old chief engineering hotshot that Alex had met on the Mercury program, and not the old man he’s meant to be.

“You’ve been around someone like me this whole time, but I don’t think she knows it,” Michael says, heading over to a structure covered with a sheet that Michael yanks off, revealing a structure unlike anything he’s ever seen before.

Even through the sunglasses, he’s pretty sure that what he’s looking at isn’t human. The spirit inside him suddenly glows bright blue with interest and it takes all of Alex’s control to keep it from leaping out. 

“What is that?”

Michael crosses his arms over his chest, giving Alex the same look he always got when he had a new upgrade on the rocket to show Alex. “It’s a pod,” he says. “Alex, you know I was adopted, right? Years ago, by the Guerins, but after you told me to leave, I found out that what I am might not be so...earthly.”

Alex presses his hand to his chest a little tighter. 

He can hear the spirit clamoring to get out, to show him, but Alex is still stunned by the fact that Michael is standing in front of him and that this might not be a dream. 

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your contact with the thing inside you wasn’t the first alien presence you’ve come into contact with.”

For a man who’s lived long past his shelf date and has another consciousness inside of him, this is a lot for him to process. “Is this how you’re the same age as me?”

“Not exactly the same. I think I’m about six years older than you, now. I put myself into stasis for fifty years and came out to work the problem. Once I’d established that you were still alive, I dug into old government records and found their best guess at what happened to you. From there, I did my own research,” he says, bundling up notebooks and papers. “I worked on my powers, I learned what I could do.” 

Alex is staring, but he can’t help it. Michael’s the same as ever, right down to the excited flush on his cheeks and the way his eyes light up when he talks about the problem at hand.

“Alex, I can heal you and help you find a balance with the spirit where it could depart your body and live on its own. I know what it’s doing to you to stay alive, but it doesn’t have to be like that.”

“That’s not safe,” Alex warns, stepping back.

“No,” Michael agrees, after a long moment. “Not if we stay on Earth.”

“What are you saying?”

“I built you one ship,” Michael says, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “C’mon, Captain Manes,” he encourages, nodding for him to follow him out the back door to the barn on the edge of Michael’s property. “It’s time for you to see version two.” 

“It doesn’t matter if you have a ship,” Alex protests, even if he can feel the spirit inside him practically begging for them to go with him. “I was irradiated, Michael. If I take these bandages off, I am going to kill you. Besides that, if you heal me and I lose that radiation, the spirit has nowhere to go.”

“It lived without you,” Michael reminds him. “If I heal you, you’d be like me. You’d age normally again. I’d get your cells to a point where you’re the same age as I am and the extraterrestrial being inside of you would gain its freedom back. We can do it both ways. I can heal you so it goes, or I can heal you and teach you that balance. Either way, I’m going to get back the Alex Manes that I fell in love with.”

Never, not once in their time together, has Alex ever seen his chest glow so brilliantly blue to hear something.

“I think it likes the idea,” Michael boasts. “It’s your choice which option you pick, but I gotta say, I’m pretty partial to the one where we grow old together, the way we were supposed to.”

He reaches out, ignorant of the danger lurking beneath Alex’s bandages (or just not caring), to slide his hand on top of Alex’s. And then, once he’s got Alex’s hand in his, he pushes open the door to the barn to reveal a glimmering pink and purple spaceship with an alien console.

It has two seats.

“Michael…” 

He’s here. He’s real. Alex has learned not to get his hopes up, but everything in him says that he must be dreaming, because this is all too good to be true. He’s been tempted and teased before, been given back his body in his own mind, but the one thing that’s making him think this is real is the panic.

He’s so anxious about this that he can barely breathe. 

None of the dreams ever had that. 

“Have you ever done this before?”

“Healed an irradiated version of the man I love, therefore releasing the spirit that keeps him immortal?” Michael scrunches up his face, shaking his head. “Nah, they didn’t cover that during my years at school.” He slips in to gently tug at the bandages on Alex’s wrist. “You’re still going to let me try, though, right?”

“If you do this,” Alex says, beginning to understand what it means, “then I’d be leaving them behind. I’d be turning my back on the people who helped me.”

Michael seems to understand how big that is. He lets his fingers still, staring up at Alex from where his eyes are hooded. 

“It’s up to you, Alex. I’m offering you a life. I’m offering you a life with me.”

Inside him, the spirit is going wild. If he’s a cage for it, the thing is practically smacking headfirst into the bars to make an escape attempt, as if it’s trying to make Alex pick the choice that’s best for the both of them. 

Michael hasn’t looked away.

He never did, not until Alex forcibly sent him. 

And here he is, offering Alex a way to live outside of a bubble, as _himself_ again. “You’re sure you can do this?”

“I would never risk you,” Michael vows, his words dire and serious.

He’s not sure what he says. It’s a version of yes, though. He nods, or maybe he says ‘okay’ or he reaches out for Michael’s hand. It’s a promise that he’s willing to give them a shot, and it’s a confirmation that he wants this. He wants to be selfish. He doesn’t want to be a hero.

He just wants to be Alex Manes, the man Michael Guerin loves.

And Michael’s found a way for that to happen and for the thing inside of him to go play hero all it likes, somewhere else. “Then, let’s do this.”

* * *

“Last chance,” Michael says, once the ship’s propulsions systems have been engaged. 

Alex is in the driver’s seat, flexing his hands in front of him. He’s still not used to seeing his _hands_ , but there they are. There’s still some mild scarring and radiation marks that Michael will work on, but when Alex looks in the mirror, he’ll see a man on the mend. His hair will grow back, his scars will heal, and over the next few months, Michael will tend to him and make sure that he’s safe until they find a place to dock. 

Alex is leaving behind the only friends and family he’s known for decades. The Chief has cared for him, given him a home and a way to live. Isobel has been there at his side and a better friend than he ever had. He might not be as close with Rosa and Kyle, but they’re still his people.

One glance at where Michael’s setting the controls up for their flight, and Alex understands that as much as it will ache to say goodbye to his family, he’s finally choosing to be honest about what he wants.

“What?” Michael asks, frozen in place when he sees Alex staring.

“Nothing,” Alex admits, reaching across the console to take Michael’s hand in his, pressing the cloth into Michael’s palm to give it back to him. “Just a little overwhelmed. I’m finally saying yes. I’m finally giving us a shot at a life together. It’s all you ever asked for.”

“It’s all I ever wanted,” Michael murmurs, sinking into the passenger seat as his fingers clasp down on the fabric. 

Now that he can be honest with himself, Alex knows that he feels the exact same. There are no more 6:12 trains to Tulsa, but there don’t have to be.

Alex isn’t living in his memory these days.

He might be leaving a life behind, but it’s to start a brand new one. 

The blue spirit lingers beside the spacecraft, almost like it still feels tethered to Alex, and it stays with them until they’re in orbit above the planet below. It’s not Alex’s first rodeo, but this time, he’s not alone.

The being that gave him back Michael watches the planet below them, dissipating and coalescing, almost like a heartbeat. And the man he loves, Michael Guerin, sits beside him in a spaceship. He’s healthy and hearty and hale, and he’s all Alex’s. 

“It’s not so wrong anymore, is it?” Michael whispers, clasping Alex’s hand tight.

No. No, it’s not.

“It’s never felt more right,” promises Alex, finally looking forward to his future.


End file.
